Insecurities about having exhausted my contribution at work spawned this dream:
I am being harassed at work--by my supervisor. Cruelly interrogating me, he has even formed a committee to scrutinize all the correspondence I've produced over the years. Sitting around a large conference table, while building this case against me, one of my interrogators aggressively flips a document toward me. I'm to explain why I had X'd out some sentences and had substituted the handwritten word "hummingbird" in their place. As he discusses this, I give him "the look" and do eye-rolling. Then, still defending myself against these charges, I confess that once I even wrote "shit" on a paper. As they continue this witch hunt, I announce my intention to get a lawyer. But I know I'm really going to quit.
Socialized and hypersensitive about having reached retirement age, I put lots of pressure on myself to get the heck out, before they tossed me out. I'd seen others before me experience a lot of humiliation by being forced out, and I didn't want to be one of them. The pressure I created for myself was not necessarily a bad thing. It was a push in the right direction.
Deciphering the dream sequence taking place before the tribunal was easy. Having felt out-of-my-element, at times, in the business world, I did have to explain myself on occasion. My role in representing the employees' perspective often brought me into conflict with the principals of the company. Too often, I found business jargon dehumanizing. So substituting "hummingbird," for a paragraph's worth of words, surely resonated with me, preferring the elusive bird image over the usual "business speak."
And, I would probably have wanted to write "shit" a countless number of times.
Picture from Allposters: H. Daumier, Advocate, 1860
No comments:
Post a Comment